Quarantine
by Diary
Summary: Re-posted. Chris and Reid solve a medical mystery during a quarantine, and Chris deals with a dilemma involving Reid and Luke. Complete.


Disclaimer: I do not own As the World Turns.

* * *

"He's your boyfriend."

"And you lost the bet," Reid says, as if trying to figure out how Chris's statement has anything to do with said fact.

Chris reminds himself that, eventually, this quarantine will end; his father is only fifteen minutes from the hospital, will be inside the hospital the second it's lifted, and bizarrely enough, has a legitimate fondness for Reid. Therefore, strangling the neurosurgeon isn't much of an option. Greta's the only person besides them in the waiting area, and she hates Reid, but she loves John, who is also fond of Reid.

It's frankly beyond Chris how a man like Reid Oliver can have so many people so fond of him.

"I'm not telling Luke that we're under quarantine! It was bad enough having to deal with my family; I'm not dealing with Luke, too."

Luke has always been polite to Chris, but ever since Reid almost died, that politeness has been thickly laced with ice. Chris can just imagine how Luke will take it when he hears Chris's voice over the phone, telling him that due to a stupid nurse's chemical spill, the hospital will be quarantined for, at least, forty-eight hours, but yes, Reid is fine, and please, for the love of God, don't have Lucinda Walsh help you sneak in.

The last one is not a foolish fear on Chris's part. Lucinda has everyone in town on puppet strings, but Luke has his maternal grandmother wrapped around his finger.

Reid gives half-smile; it's not quite a smirk, but Chris still doesn't like it. "You lost the bet, Doogie. You agreed that the winner-"

"I know what I agreed. I was under the assumption the loser would have to deal with Mrs Wesley or a patient with a benign pus-filled growth."

"So was I, but then, this happened. Now, would you call him before one of the many over-dramatic residents of this town hears and informs him that I'm dead or having an affair or holding the hospital hostage or whatever their silly little brain can spin?" At Chris's look, he adds, "Don't look at me like that; we both know that people in Oakdale love gossip and disdain any accuracy that could possibly diminish the chance of pearl-clutching happening."

Before Chris can respond, Reid spots one of the CDC officers clad in a hazmat suit carrying a plate full of cookies and immediately goes to intersect the officer.

"Those are for the children!" Chris tries to make a grab for the neurosurgeon, but Reid is already out of reach.

Looking up, Greta sees what Chris is yelling about and sighs, giving him a sympathetic look. Then, she gets up and starts moving, saying, "I'll handle it, Doctor Hughes."

"Right. Good luck with that," Chris mutters, picking up the phone and preparing himself.

...

"But-"

Brenda guides the protesting doctor away, hand wrapped firmly around his elbow. "You had a cookie, Doctor Oliver. And that's all you'll have. Now, about this patient-"

"I wrote down orders," Reid protests, trying to reach the tray with his free hand.

"Your orders," she says, firmly, increasing her pace, "were ineligible. The best I could make out had something to do with lollipops; if you expect any of the nurses here to be your sugar pimps-"

"Sugar- Do you have any idea how that sounds? Or how horrified I'm am just thinking about how it sounds? I wrote to give her a shot of penicillin and check Doctor Hughes's inventory of lollipops."

"Could you please write it so that more than one word can be discerned next time?" Stopping in front of a room, she says, "Mrs Wesley is very anxious."

"That's-"

"Doctor Hughes is busy calling Mister Snyder," Brenda says, placidly.

He studies her. "What's the trade-off?"

"Trade-off?"

"You deal with me so the other nurses don't have to. What are they promising in repayment?"

"Nothing," Brenda answers, smiling serenely. "I use you to make sure my skills in dealing with and occasionally putting such doctors in his or her place don't atrophy."

"Huh," Reid says, giving her one last look before entering the hospital room.

...

Chris drums his fingers, a feeling of dread settling over him.

Lily Walsh has no idea where her son is; Holden Snyder saw Luke earlier but doesn't know where he is now. Both have heard the news of the quarantine and extended their regards. Holden gave him Luke's cell phone number and advised him to try Lucinda if that didn't work.

Greta appears, without Reid, and Chris is about to hang up the ringing phone, but she mouths 'Brenda', and he relaxes. Brenda isn't always able to handle Reid, but the neurosurgeon has yet to make her cry. That's something.

"Luke Snyder's phone," a male, vaguely breathless voice that is definitely not Luke answers.

Before Chris can respond, he hears, "Shh. Give me that!" Then, "Hello?"

"Luke?"

"Yes. Chris?"

Luke also sounds breathless, and Chris hears him faintly whisper, "Not now!"

"Uh, I'm calling to tell you that Memorial is under quarantine; don't worry, Reid and everyone is fine," he quickly assures the other man, "but we're going to be here for, at least, forty-eight hours. Who was that who answered the phone?"

"Just a friend," Luke says, dismissively. "What happened, and why isn't Reid calling?"

"A nurse mishandled an experimental drug; it's mostly harmless, but an antidote is required, which is going to take some time to fly in. Once it is, everyone needs to be checked out to make sure it took." He sighs. "Your boyfriend and I had a bet, which he won. When this happened, he insisted I call you."

"Of course," Luke says, as if that makes perfect sense. "I'm going to see if your parents need anything. Is Allie there?"

"No; she left an hour before it happened."

"Oh, good. I mean, not that any of this is good, and it's selfish of me, but Casey has an exam tomorrow and doesn't need the stress," Luke says, sounding so Luke-like that Chris momentarily forgets his curiosity. "As long as she's okay, there's no need to call him right now. Is there anything the others and I can do besides wait?"

"Call every now and then, but not too often," Chris answers. Then, he hears something that sounds like a- a sound that most people wouldn't make outside the bedroom. "This friend of yours," he starts, knowing that is suspicion is irrational and insulting.

"I've got to go," Luke says. "Uh, thank you for telling me about this, Chris. Bye."

He barely returns the 'bye' before Luke is hanging up. Staring at the phone, he listens to the silence until the dial tone comes on. Hanging it up, he tries to shake the feeling washing over him.

Luke Snyder wouldn't cheat. Reid once wondered aloud if everyone in this town has a genetic compulsion to cheat in their DNA. Chris had privately conceded that that was a fair assumption, but Luke is one of the few people Chris knows who would rather die than cheat.

A niggling part of his brain, however, remembers a rumour he's heard bits-and-pieces of about a drunken Luke who had acted inappropriately with a man Lucinda Walsh had briefly married while he was involved with Noah Mayer. Chris had always assumed that this former husband of Lucinda's had tried to take advantage of Luke and that was the cause of their speedy annulment and the man's quick departure from town. What if the other version was correct, however?

Before helplessness can overtake him, he's hears the alarm for code blue, and Brenda runs into the waiting area, scrubs in hand. "Mrs Wesley just went into cardiac arrest," she says, thrusting them towards him. "Doctor Oliver has her momentarily stabilised, but she's going to need immediate surgery."

"Five minutes," he says, heading towards the nearest bathroom.

Dammit. Theodora Wesley is a lonely widow who is constantly at the hospital for non-existent medical issues. Aside from her hypochondria, she's in perfect health.

"Paging Doctor Allcome to the operating room 5," Reid's voice says over the intercom as Chris is leaving the bathroom, causing him to groan.

How exactly can a perfectly healthy person suddenly need extensive medical assistance when there are literally only three doctors and a handful of nurses in the whole hospital?

...

"Something's not right," Reid says as soon as Chris enters. "She's never complained of chest pains, and the scans we did three weeks ago showed a perfectly healthy heart."

"Yeah," Chris agrees, washing his hands as a nurse places a cap and mask on him. "What do you think?"

"I think we're going to need to open the heart," Reid answers, unhappily.

"Christ," Chris mutters as gloves are slipped on. A neurosurgeon and a paediatrician doing heart surgery; they've both done it in the past, but those times, like this one, had been emergency circumstances. How one handles the brain is very different from how one handles the heart, and Chris has done very few surgeries in his career, preferring to leave them to surgeons.

"Did you call Luke," Reid asks as a nurse rolls the surgical tray in.

"Yeah; he said that he's going to check on Mom and Dad," Chris answers, checking Mrs Wesley's vitals on the machine.

"Thank goodness none of his numerous relatives are here," Reid comments. "Okay, help me open the chest. I'll try to do the heart."

Nodding, they get to work.

The nurses fill the I.V.s with the appropriate medicines, and they start to crack the chest open. "Perfectly healthy," Chris mutters as they look down at the heart.

"No; it's slightly swollen," Reid corrects, carefully massaging the heart. "There's something inside; feel over here."

He does, and he can feel what a bump, almost undetectable. "Tumour?"

"Could be cancerous," Reid notes, clinically. "Everyone stand by, and be ready for seizing. I'm going to start."

Chris watches the monitors, ready to step forward or backward if necessary.

"Doogie," Reid, voice completely emotionless, says, "look."

He does and wishes he hadn't. The tumour is small but coal black and intertwined with several tissues. "Call the nearest hospital and have them quarantine an operating room with a cardiologist and surgical team standing by," he orders. "We need a protective transfer bed; tell the CDC people to take her to the roof when the medicopter lands."

"Five percent chance of survival," Reid says. "Eleven if I operate now."

"The liability that would open us up to-"

Reid snaps his fingers, the sound distorted by his gloves. "Dying patient on the table, Chris. I care more about her priories than I do yours, and I'm fairly sure hers involve living. Six percent isn't much, but the difference between five and eleven is pretty significant under the circumstances."

He wants to argue, but then, he looks at Mrs Wesley's face. She's a pain-in-the-ass, and this could blow up in all their faces, but Reid's right: She's a dying patient who needs every percentage she can get. "What do I need to do?"

"You're doing it," Reid answers. "Hold the heart and tell me if the pulsing changes. If the monitor changes, someone tell me immediately. How's she doing on the anaesthetic?" He picks up a knife and begins working.

"Stable," one of the nurses answers.

The room is deathly quiet as Reid works. "Be ready to stitch," he tells Chris after a while.

"Right."

"Now," Reid says, as he disconnects a part of the tumour from one of the tissues.

Quickly, Chris begins stitching the tissue up.

"Doctors, the anaesthetic is-"

"Up it," both order.

"Done. She's stable."

Ten minutes later, Reid says, "That's all of it. Let's close the heart and chest."

Once that's done, thankfully with no coding, Reid says, "Put her in a quarantined room; until she sufficiently recovers, the antidote can't be administered. Somebody get me all her files; I want to find out how everyone managed to miss this."

"I'll help you go through them," Chris says. "And please, for the love of God, somebody get some food for him," he tells the others. "If I'm going to have to spend an extended period of time in a room alone with him-"

Several nurses and orderlies pat him sympathetically at that. Last year, there was a lock-down, and Reid had come close to either murdering or being murdered after three hours of no food; even the people who hadn't been there don't want a repeat of that particular incident. Reid on a normal day is bad enough; they can only imagine what Reid on a day with no food and no Luke would be like. "Of course, Doctor Hughes," one of them says, sweetly.

Removing his masks, Reid takes a deep breath. "Doogie," he says, once the room is cleared, "don't start dating a nurse. Having weekly dinners with Katie and working with you is awkward enough; having to work with you and someone-"

"That was Leslie Marie, who is married to another woman," Chris says, rolling his eyes, sore at the mention of his past relationship with Katie. Then, he remembers the phone call to Luke and sighs.

...

"Two hours," Chris says, looking at his watch. "Still stable."

"And still no sign of how this happened." Sighing, Reid stands. "I'm going to call Luke."

"Brenda's guarding the paediatrics ward."

"Why does everyone get such pleasure from depriving me of food?"

"You ate an entire large pizza; leave the cookies and ice-cream to the kids."

"There's ice-cream?"

Chris simply looks at him. "You make nurses cry, Oliver. Therefore, you deserve no sympathy."

When Reid turns, he winces. Then again, with how in love Reid is with Luke, if the younger man is cheating, Reid actually does deserve sympathy.

He still has no idea what to do.

When Reid returns, Chris asks, "How's Luke holding up?"

"Fine; he's working on a new project for the foundation and staying with a friend at the Lakeview."

"Friend?"

Misinterpreting his tone, Reid says, "No, I didn't pay attention. He's okay; when I get out of here, we can have a nice dinner, and he can tell me all about his newest project."

"I was just curious if the friend was male or female," Chris says, looking down at the file in front of him. "No real reason," he adds, feeling Reid's look.

"I think it might have been the brother or father or uncle of a kid on Jacob's tee-ball team," Reid says, dismissively, sitting back down. "Do you remember her ever complaining about her heart?"

"Once before Mr Wesley died, she came in and complained about heartburn, but that was over a year ago. I made her some herbal tea and sent her home. I listened to her heart a week ago; it was normal."

"All her blood tests are normal; she was scanned three times in the last six months, in a different machine each time. What are the chances of each machine being faulty?"

"What if it wasn't the machines?"

Looking up, Reid asks, "What's on your mind, Doogie?"

"Did the same person scan her each time? Or the same person handle her paperwork?"

"I'll go pull those records," Reid says with a sigh.

"Here," Chris says, standing up. "I'll do that, and you get us some coffee."

"And cookies?"

"Alright, listen," Chris says. "If you buy me some stuff from the vending machine, I'll tell Brenda to let you have two cookies and one bowl of ice-cream."

"Three, and I want a cherry, too."

"I don't think they have cherries, but okay: three cookies and a bowl of ice-cream."

"Deal."

...

"Doctor Marie Parker," Reid says. "Who is she, what does she do, and where is she?"

"Immunologist," Chris answers. "Been here for about three years; she's at a conference in Washington. Why?"

"She's been prescribing mild sedatives to Mrs Wesley for a little over a year."

"So?"

"So, I've checked the pharmacy logs, and the numbers don't match. But look at this," Reid says, sliding the report over.

Chris looks at the highlighted parts. There's a slight discrepancy in the number of an anti-rejection drug (too little in the pharmacy) and the sedative (a large number is still present in the pharmacy), but that's to be expected. Every hospital, no matter how strict and careful, always has a small amount of unaccounted for drugs.

Then, he gets it. "She put a prescription for the sedative in the records but gave- which, for people without transplants can cause tumours."

"She has full-access to the labs; it wouldn't be hard for her to replace the scans with healthy ones. I'm going to scan this. Do I send an email to Margo or to a police station near her conference?"

"Send it to Margo; I'll pull all the records of Parker's patients and check Mrs Wesley for any other tumours."

"Why did I ever want this position," Reid wonders with a groan.

"I'm wondering the same thing about myself." Standing, he says, "I know it would put us both on Mom's kill-list, but you wanna try and get Dad back?"

"Don't tempt me."

...

Two days later, and an announcement that quarantine will end in an hour has been announced.

Chris is grateful, ready for a change of clothes and his own bed. Everyone's taken to wearing a different pair of scrubs each day, and there are showers. Still, a bath and regular clothes will be wonderful.

Now, if he could just figure out what to do about the Luke situation. He wants to ignore it.

However, he's always hated it when he couldn't tell a patient's significant other that they were being cheated on. He doesn't know that Luke is cheating, but if he is, Reid deserves to know. How he's supposed to tell him without it coming across as another part of their rivalry, however, he has no clue.

When he walks into the locker room, Reid is sitting, talking on his cell phone. "Yeah. I love you, too," he says, ending the call.

Chris shakes his head as he goes to his locker. He's heard Reid say it before, and yet, he still can't help but wonder who's saying it and how they stole Reid's voice every time he hears it. "You and Luke meeting up?"

"Yes," Reid says, yawning. Standing, he opens his locker to hang remove his dirty scrubs. "He's going to take me to Katie's, and in sixteen hours, we're going to attend some family dinner," he says in distaste, accidentally knocking something off the top.

Chris bends down to pick the object up, and when he sees it's a jewellery box, he automatically opens it, not thinking. Inside are two matching silver rings of different sizes. "Say it isn't so," he mutters. Louder, he says, "Reid, are these wedding bands?"

"They might be," Reid says, grabbing the box.

"Not gold," Chris notes.

"I prefer silver."

"You and Luke?" Chris exclaims, everything finally hitting him.

"Doogie," Reid says, closing the box and putting it back in his locker. "Is this because it's me, or is it the whole gays marrying thing? If it's the latter, I am very disappointed in you. And a little shocked, to be honest."

"It's because of you," Chris assures him, truthfully. "I thought you were anti-any marriage."

"I am. I was." Shutting his locker, Reid looks pensive. "We've been living together for six years," here he pauses, and then, sighs, "and been in love for even longer. I think it's time to stop fighting it and just admit that I want to make all those promises of love and fidelity in front of witnesses. God help me, I want the government and whoever we buy a house from to formally recognise that Luke and I have a relationship that hopefully will last forever."

Then, Reid snaps out of his trance, no doubt fuelled by little sleep, copious amounts of sugar and caffeine, and vague defensiveness. "I don't know why I just babbled all of that to you of all people."

"I don't know either," Chris says, sighing as he sits down. "But I really wish you hadn't. Sit down, Doctor Oliver."

Once Reid does, looking at him curiously, Chris says, "When I called Luke, a man answered his cell. He sounded breathless. Then, Luke came on, and he sounded breathless. There were whispers and some noises that frankly I'd only expect to hear if sex was involved. I asked him who his friend was, twice, and he never answered. I find it hard to believe Luke would cheat, and I can't say for sure that he is. But something seemed off, and you deserve to know there's a possibility."

Face completely blank, Reid stands, opens his locker and grabs the jewellery box, slipping it into his pants pocket, and leaves, not even bothering to re-close the locker. Sighing, Chris reaches over with his foot and pushes it shut. "Sorry," he says to the empty room, feeling sick to his stomach.

Chris still despises Reid Oliver, but if Luke is cheating, he's going to have no objection to sending Brenda out to rip the younger man a new one.

...

Luke is one of the first inside once the quarantine is lifted, and while Chris's parents are fussing over him, he watches as Reid grabs Luke and kisses him with what others would see as passion but that he can unfortunately recognise as desperation. Once the kiss is broken, Reid says something, and Luke, looking puzzled, nods. They walk out of the hospital hand-in-hand.

...

Three days later, Reid appears at Chris's apartment, a silver band on his left ring finger.

"Hey, Doogie," Reid says, cheerfully stealing the bowl of soup Chris made for himself. "Luke is working on a new commercial for the foundation; Lisa agreed to let them use the Lakeview for the film's setting. Before they started filming, he and the others had a basketball game. Two of the participants involved are just as hot and heavy off-camera as on, if not more so."

There's a pause while Chris thinks of what to say, feeling the relief wash over him, when Reid, quietly adds, "Thank you."

"Let's just agree to never speak of it again."

"Yes," Reid says, finishing the soup. "Oh, and against my will, you and your parents have been invited to the wedding. Invitations will be out shortly."

"Thanks, Oliver."

"Doogie," Reid says, leaving.


End file.
